store experience
How Starbucks is turning itself into a tech company
venturebeat.com
The coffee was brewing as usual, and patrons were as caffeine-crazed as any other day, but something curious was happening behind the scenes at beloved and bemoaned coffee giant Starbucks on March 9, 2012. On that date, Adam Brotman, formerly senior vice president of Starbucks Digital Ventures, was named...
Mobile: Don't Think Different: Apple Adds Straightjacket Mode to iOS
www.wired.com
Illustration: Ross Patton/Wired Business iPad users beware. Your halcyon days of loading whatever the heck you want onto your tablet may be coming to an end. Apple is set to introduce a couple of new features that will give corporate IT new ways to lock down the iOS 6 operating...
Amazon preparing to launch a pilot retail store in Seattle?
www.theverge.com
Despite its domination of the digital marketplace, Amazon is reportedly preparing for a move into brick and mortar retail stores, according to Good eReader. Apparently, the company will start in the next few months with a boutique retail store in Seattle to gauge interest and see if it could...
LightSpeed Raises $30M From Accel To Help Retailers Serve Tech-Savvy Shoppers
techcrunch.com
LightSpeed, a company promising to help physical retailers adapt to the digital age, has raised $30 million in Series A funding from Accel Partners. This is one of those investments where Accel finds an already-successful company that has been bootstrapping for several years, if not longer. (The most recent announcement...
How to design a store in a world of connectivity
gigaom.com
Tesla’s VP of Worldwide Sales and Ownership Experience, George Blankenship, arguably knows more than anyone about how to design a disruptive brick and mortar store. Before he joined electric car company Tesla, he created the store experience for Apple, which has one of the most compelling in-store user experiences out...
Online, in-store: Merge, retail, merge!
tech.fortune.cnn.com
A new software platform from LightSpeed works between retailers and e-commerce. [cnnmoney-byline src="By Caitlin Keating, reporter"] FORTUNE -- Everyone -- from J.C. Penney (JCP) CEO Ron Johnson to Barnes & Noble (BKS) CEO William J. Lynch -- wants to bridge the divide between online sales and in-store experience. They might...
Microsoft talks Windows Store features, Metro app sandboxing for Windows 8 developers
www.theverge.com
In a post today on Microsoft's Building Windows 8 blog, program manager John Hanzen took a deep dive on two topics that are set to separate the platform's Metro style apps apart from every Windows app before them: installation and permissions. It's no secret that Microsoft is pushing Windows'...
Op-ed: the Mac App Store needs paid upgrades
arstechnica.com
Op-ed: Talk about how to improve the Mac App Store experience has steadily increased since its launch in 2011. In this op-ed piece, Omni Group and Delicious Library founder Wil Shipley argues why the Mac App Store needs a mechanism for paid upgrades and how it would improve the...
Despite App Store rules crackdown, comparison tool App Shopper returns with a social bent
thenextweb.com
Late last year, Arnold Kim got a surprise notice from Apple. His super-popular app comparison shopping tool App Shopper was to be removed from the App Store for violation of a 3-month-old rule. The rule prohibited apps from displaying apps in a way that was ‘similar to or confusing with...
Tesla messes with Texas, over how to sell its electric cars
gigaom.com
Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk spoke in Austin at the Texas Capitol on Wednesday morning, calling for support of a bill that would make it legal for Tesla to sell its electric cars directly to the public from its own stores. Texas (like some other states) has franchise laws that forbid...
Bring the Apple Store experience home, get yourself a Genius Bar Lithium Atom logo
9to5mac.com
In the back of every Apple store is the iconic Lithium Atom logo designating the Genius Bar area. One seller on eBay has gotten his hands on one of these displays and has put it up for sale (first time we’ve seen). Apple Store collectibles are rare because Apple...
Verizon, like everyone else, set to copy Apple Store concept
9to5mac.com
Click to view slideshow. Microsoft’s attempts to mimic Apple’s retail success is quite obvious with the Redmond-based company’s habit of opening up shop right across the hall/street. Not just the location, but the interiors of Microsoft’s retail locations often borrow from Apple’s, with long wooden harvest tables displaying devices, an...
Mobile Phones Make You Go 'Blind' In Supermarkets
www.businessinsider.com
For years, magazine publishers (and the brands who buy ads inside their pages) have enjoyed heavy impulse sales from bored supermarket shoppers, trapped in checkout lines, who find themselves leafing through Vogue or Cosmo while waiting to pay for groceries. But that's all coming to an end thanks to mobile...
Hands-on with the Windows Store: meet your source for Metro apps
arstechnica.com
With today's release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, we got our first hands-on experience with the brand-spanking-new Windows Store. The previously released Developer Preview showed an icon (or tile, in Windows 8-speak) for the Store, but clicking it didn't lead anywhere. Now, you can actually download tons of...
BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: Mobile Is The Future Of Retail
www.businessinsider.com
Mobile Insights is a daily newsletter from BI Intelligence delivered first thing every morning exclusively to BI Intelligence subscribers. Sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today. Mobile Is The Future Of Retail, But It Won't Come Fast (Publishers Weekly)At a panel called Retail Is Going Mobile, which took place at SXSW Interactive over...
Educational Startup KinderTown Launches KinderSights, Tells App Developers What Parents Want
techcrunch.com
KinderTown, the company that makes the ever-useful educational app store for parents, is rolling out a new service targeted towards app developers. KinderSights, as it’s called, will offer up a series of monthly reports based on KinderTown’s internal data. The reports aim to answer the question: what apps are parents...
Why Ron Johnson Is Eliminating Commission At JCPenney
www.businessinsider.com
On Monday, JCPenney announced that it's no longer going to pay employees commission. It's a big shift, since sales staff in six different JCPenney departments have traditionally received it. Why is this happening? It's likely because JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson, the mind behind the Apple Store when he headed up...
Google Launches Brand New Play Store
www.pcworld.com
The Google Play store's dramatic redesign was unveiled today after much anticipation. The new design attempts to brighten up the app store experience, improving usability, capability, and appearance all at once. The Google Play store is the built-in hub for downloading content to mobile devices that run on the...
Why Dennis Crowley Loves The Nike+ FuelBand
www.businessinsider.com
We went to check out the Nike event at SXSW. There is so much stuff being given out here for free, we were surprised that there was actually a line to go in and buy something: The Nike+ FuelBand. It's a wristband that keeps track of your daily activity and...
SF-Based Watchmaker Xetum Releases New Racing-Themed Line, The Kendrick
techcrunch.com
Our favorite makers in the Bay area, Xetum, have just released their new line of Kendrick watches in time for racing season. The watches, designed in California and assembled in Switzerland, are fairly unique in the watch industry as Xetum is one of the few American watch brands – besides...
Not a piece of sh*t, LightSpeed lands $30M for polished Mac and iOS POS system
venturebeat.com
POS. It’s the universally understand acronym that can stand for “piece of sh*t” or “point of sale” — and that’s no coincidence. Lightspeed, which seeks to change retailers’ perception of point-of-sale systems, has today announced $30 million in its first institutional round of funding. The Series A investment, raised...
How Best Buy Is Training Employees On Microsoft's Radically Different Windows 8 (MSFT, BBY)
www.businessinsider.com
Microsoft is set to release four different versions of its Windows operating system this week and it's likely to cause some customer confusion. We reached out to Jason Bonfig, Merchant VP for Computing and MP3 at Best Buy, to see how the retailer will train its employees to be ready...
Will mobile-data growth decrease by 2015? Attend Mobilize and find out
gigaom.com
At Mobilize 2012 GigaOM’s own Kevin Tofel pokes a few holes in the theory that mobile-data growth will decrease by 2015, and he paints a different picture of what he thinks will happen. Register now and get the whole story at Mobilize 2012. We will welcome Kevin to the stage, along...
Y Combinator Company BitNami Makes Deeper Move On Booming App Store Market
techcrunch.com
BitNami, a Y Combinator company, has announced that it will focus more on being an app store for server software. The goal is to provide customers with a Google Play or Apple App Store experience that can be accessed on their own infrastructure. The BitNami platform provides the server infrastructure that...
The Windows 8 Store is broken: Here's how to fix it
www.extremetech.com
When Microsoft built Windows 8, it bet that it could create a Windows Store experience that would rival competitors like Apple and Google. The company was confident enough of its abilities in this sphere that it decided to lock Windows RT devices to purchases made within the Windows Store, and...
Cisco gives stores more info on shopper location with ThinkSmart buy
venturebeat.com
Cisco is buying Wi-Fi analytics company ThinkSmart Technologies for an unspecified amount. By analyzing Wi-Fi data, Cicso says retailers will get a better scoop on how quickly consumers move in stores, when stores get the most crowded, and where consumers go when they shop. (Of course, this assumes that most shoppers...
Can we get more connected? Find out at Mobilize 2012
gigaom.com
Always-on complex devices and sensors, all produced by different manufacturers, connecting via different broadband technologies now need to interact with one another to serve needs for security, home automation and entertainment. How will these devices be controlled and managed in the coming years? Get the full story at GigaOM’s Mobilize...
Point Inside lands $3.2 million to help retailers sell more stuff in brick-and-mortar stores
www.geekwire.com
Point Inside CEO Josh Marti can’t quite keep up with the momentum right now. His Bellevue mobile shopping analytics and mapping upstart plans to more than double sales this year, driven in part by two of the country’s top 10 retailers who plan to roll out the company’s platform. To...
Vision Critical 'Very Satisfied' with $20M for its online customer surveys
venturebeat.com
Vision Critical took $20 million to build out its community panel platform which administers customer surveys and facilities two-way communication between organizations and consumers. Businesses can use Vision Critical’s products to engage with their customers, receive feedback, and provide customer service support. The program can be used to conduct...
Social Commerce, Pinterest And The Future Of Fashion Retail
techcrunch.com
Editor’s note: Leo Chen is a former product manager at Amazon and is currently the co-founder of Monogram, an iPad fashion discovery and shopping app funded by 500 Startups. You can find Leo on Twitter @leoalmighty. Death of brick-and-mortar retail Andrew Chen recently recommended a video to me, which inspired this post. It’s a keynote...
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